This is fascinating and scary at the same time. I dread the future when people will have access to cheaper health insurance with the caveat that all consultations and procedures will be performed solely by AI. Want a human? Pay extra.

▲

Cthulhu_ 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

This is already happening though, to a point; recently, local GPs have been subsumed into larger health care provider companies, and they have set up systems so that before you can make an appointment, you need to go through a wizard and / or chat interface. Likewise, people are encouraged to go to a website and do some self-diagnosis before calling a doctor - things like "if you have a fever, how high is it and for how long have you had it?"

It's indirectly related to health insurance cost, as we have a GP shortage and they (I presume?) realized a lot of people are making appointments and wasting a GP's time for trivialties like a cough or cold.

I'm pretty sure they already have, or are experimenting with having people go through an AI chatbot first. This is already very much a thing with any kind of customer support. It's not a new development though, the preceding generation was conversational interfaces.

▲

sznio 5 hours ago | parent [-]

I don't want the process of getting healthcare to be as adversarial as customer support. People will be dead by the time anyone answers.

Need an ambulance? Let me escalate to the department that will escalate you to a department that will dispatch the ambulance in 5-10 business days.

	▲	voakbasda 4 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		I have already given up the idea of getting heath care. I have top-shelf insurance that has all the preventative stuff included, but it is simply not worth the effort. The quality of care is not even worth my co-pay.
	▲	mindslight 3 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Tell me you've never needed significant healthcare without telling me. It's never about "ambulances". The bureaucracy will happily call an ambulance for you, as it ends their involvement and absolves them of liability. And the ambulance company is happy to show up, as it's a large billable event. In fact when seeking/obtaining complex medical care, this is one of the failure modes you have to constantly swat away! As for interacting with the bureaucracy to obtain real care, it's gotten to the point where it's easier to get something done calling a large bank. Navigating the medical bureaucracy is probably on the level of calling Comcast-Warner (although I haven't had the misfortune of having to deal with them for a decade, so I'm sure they've gotten worse as well). Even before "AI", my standard experience is a multi-level phone tree, multiple mandatory announcements before you can even proceed, then waiting on hold. That merely gets you to an answering service who types a ticket into the computer system. Then you wait a ~day for a nurse to call you back (if you miss answering this call, return to step 1). Then the only urgent appointments are invariably with "nurse practitioners" who throw pre-canned advice at you, as they don't really know what they're doing. That's four layers running interference to keep you away from an actual doctor, who you will finally get to see in a month for a fifteen minute appointment, if you are lucky.

▲

sheikhnbake 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I imagine human consultation could be more expensive, at least in the US, due to liability of human error. Especially if/when AI capabilities in medical procedures becomes clearly superior.

▲

throw93937900 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I am looking forward to it! Right now we get doctors who are "qualified", but take you after 20 hour shift with no sleep, and do not even speak fluently in the same language as patient.

And this is on VERY expensive state helath insurance!!!

▲

rowanG077 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Why would you want a human? I don't see how anyone would pay more for worse care.

	▲	FacZap 6 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Humans are irrational. We also value "feeling" safe. Some tricks sell the illusion for those people who can't trust 100% some technologies. Of course I trust engineering, I know planes are safe: but when there is turbulance and I see a flight attendant just casually walking and not even reacting to it, I feel better. Humans are still humans. Of course, culture changes. Colective ideas and institutions adapt. But extremely slowly compared to advances in tech.
	▲	RandomLensman 3 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Where can you get superior AI surgery currently?

▲

threethirtytwo 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Bro the future is that AI will be optimized to a point where it is superior to humans when performing this surgery.

That is a different kind of scary. Because it’s justified. Why limit the ai when human lives are at stake?

▲

41353aab 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

[dead]